‘Kashmiris shared one pajama in entire Mohalla’: NC spokesperson’s remark triggers political storm | Jammu News
SRINAGAR: Ruling National Conference (NC) is facing a political row after its spokesperson, legislator and chief minister Omar Abdullah‘s close aide Tanvir Sadiq said Kashmiris did not have pajamas to wear and one pajama was shared by an entire mohalla.The Peoples’ Democratic Party and Bharatiya Janata Party condemned the statement, accusing the NC of portraying Kashmiris as impoverished to glorify its founder, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.On September 8, on the death anniversary of the NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Sadiq said, “our elders say Kashmiris didn’t have Pajamas to wear and one Pajama was shared by an entire Mohalla,” referring to poverty in the region. He credited Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s land reforms in the 1950s with transforming the lives of the people.The statement soon led to a political controversy, with opposition parties including the PDP and BJP, demanding an apology from Sadiq and accusing him of distorting history.The BJP burnt an effigy of Sadiq, accusing him of insulting Kashmiri women through his statement. At several places, party workers displayed effigies of Sadiq without pajamas.The BJP said describing Kashmiris as “clothless” was an attempt to glorify Abdullah. It called the statement as NC propaganda at the cost of Kashmir’s dignity.The NC, however, said the BJP was raking up the issue after the NC exposed the alleged misconduct of BJP workers during the September 2 protest of the BJP, alleging that “a woman protester was molested in the middle of this entire protest.”PDP also demanded an apology from Sadiq and said the statement reflected the NC’s attitude toward the people.“The NC lacks the current political idiom and so it has resorted to this. It also conveys the NC’s feeling about the people, which is nothing less than feudal. They don’t see the political process of Jammu and Kashmir as a process of emancipation and political and economic empowerment. Instead, they convey that all this is possible because of one party and one man, irrespective of similar reforms having taken place in other parts of the world at that time,” PDP leader Naeem Akhtar said.“Like all big political personalities, Sheikh Abdullah is a package. If you pin prick people with such insensitive comments, everything else about the man comes to people’s minds. The uncertainty and suffering of the people of Jammu and Kashmir since 1931, when Sheikh Abdullah rose, is also directly linked to his politics of U-turns, about turns, betrayals and his betrayals to his own politics,” Akhtar said.“Sheikh Abdullah definitely created a national consciousness among the people of Kashmir but his politics unfortunately disempowered them and that process of disempowerment is continuing,” he added.Instead of apologizing, Sadiq referred to British administrator and settlement commissioner Walter Lawrence, whose book The Valley of Kashmir is regarded as an important historical account in the region.Quoting Lawrence, he said, “For the Muslim peasantry, in particular, the hundred-year reign of the monarchy appointed as subcontractors of the Raj was an unmitigated disaster.”“When I first came to Kashmir in 1889, I found the people sullen, desperate and suspicious. They had been taught for many years that they were serfs without any rights … Pages might be written by me on facts which have come under my personal observation, but it will suffice to say that the system of administration had degraded the people and taken all heart out of them.”Sadiq, referring to Lawrence’s account, said the Dogra rulers imposed taxes on Kashmiri Muslims on almost everything except air, including sheep, goats and cows, and even levied taxes related to circumcision. He also referred to accounts of villagers sharing a single garment to avoid taxation.National Conference leader Salman Sagar apologized on behalf of Tanvir Sadiq stating that the comments were not intended to hurt the sentiments of the people.Prof Gul Wani, former head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Kashmir, said the reference should be understood as a metaphor used to describe conditions in an agrarian society having been affected by extreme poverty and excessive landlordism. “It is an expression or a method used to describe a particular situation and such examples are found in other parts of the world especially when discussing agrarian history. These kinds of examples are common in peasant and agrarian societies, particularly where there was excessive landlordism. It should be understood as a metaphor,” Wani said.
